The Christmas Maximalists Yule Tide

 

"Oddly enough, they often grow ten times the size of everyone else," said Alec thoughtfully, "and I've heard that they walk among the stars." 

The Phantom Tollbooth, Juster

Helen placed me on Instagram a month or so ago. It was fun to choose the topics I would follow, macro photography especially insects and nature seemed obvious, travel - nordic countries, London, Venice, New York and Japan, the Barbican and brutalist architecture (lots from the USSR) and mudlarking. We have started watching mudlarking on youtube as well. it has been relaxing and I look forward to seeing the photos even if it is a time sink. 

Instagram allows me to see the photos of people who share my interests.  In this turbulent time, I like to see the beauty that other people have discovered, the things they choose to seek out, surround themselves with. The things they treasure.  I avoid text-heavy posts with a few exceptions preferring to experience these things visually. It's seeing the world through someone else's eyes. One of the most important things for me when I travel is having someone to share the experience with. Sharing experiences not only enhances the experience at the time but creates a long term bond. You can see the same bond when family members share memories and relive experiences. 

Helen has also found a series of videos of walks that people film with GO-Pros.  There is no narration; people just film what they see as they walk. We have been able to see lots of gardens in Japan as well as the Christmas decorations in London and Red Square. It seems this is the closest we will get to travel at present, and I enjoy the unscripted nature of the videos. 

guytrott60

With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

 

Helen and I were walking the dogs thru the neighbourhood looking at the decorations. I had put up some outside lights and the interior was bursting with the tree, Nutcrackers and various Santas. I did say that what I really wanted to add was one of the older style plastic Santa or Snowman figures. Friday we went on the 2nd or 3rd non-grocery/hardware shopping trip since this all started. We went to Inglewood, a neighbourhood known for it's small shops. We had ordered several of the items ahead of time and everyone was very careful. I assume the grinches were at the malls or the various demonstrations. We visited several shops and picked up delicious burgers on the way home, also ordered online. But the highlight of the day was finding this fellow in Murphy's Mid Century a store we have frequented for years. I saw him thru the window before the store opened and we passed by again we were waved in and you can imagine what I looked at first. Coincidence can be a funny thing but it worked for me yesterday and I am delighted with our Christmas display, a little light for a gloomy time.

"Cards in each mailbox, 

angel, manger, star and lamb, 

as the rural carrier, 

driving the snowy roads, 

hears from her bundles 

the plaintive bleating of sheep, 

the shuffle of sandals, 

the clopping of camels. "

from Christmas Mail

by Ted Kooser

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55886/christmas-mail

Margalo ( Great Crested Flycatcher- Cabin - June 2019)

“My name is Margalo,' said the bird, softly, in a musical voice. 'I come from fields once tall with wheat, from pastures deep in fern and thistle; I come from vales of meadowsweet, and I love to whistle.” 
― E.B. White, Stuart Little

Shaun 2002 - Feb. 28, 2020

"I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief." Wendell Berry

Shaun and Wendolene came into our lives in May of 2006 from the Calgary Humane Society. Wendolene would have been around 7 and Shaun 4. They had to be taken as a pair which is something we wanted anyway. We lost Wendolene in Oct of 2012.

https://thatsjustthewildwood.blogspot.com/2012/10/in-may-2006-we-wanted-to-adopt-couple.html

https://sunisaxeman.blogspot.com/2012/11/blog-post.html

Today we had to say goodbye to Shaun. He had been coughing for 3 weeks but was good enough to go for a walk around the nearby cresent Sunday. But time caught up with him this week and this morning we had to make a difficult decision.

 

He was very old for a Shih Tzu but in very good shape and able to keep up with the younger dogs on walks. Last night at the vets may have been the first night he spent without either Wendolene or Whateley by his side. He was a black hole for blankets pulling them all into his orbit and then shuttling either Helen or I uncovered to the edge of the bed. Most days on the couch he would come for a chest rub, first licking (once or twice) nipping my nose and then sneezing in my face before growling ferociously the entire time. As we both grew older and greyer I used to joke that if we wore hats you could not tell us apart.  He loved pasta appearing in the kitchen whenever he suspected it was on the menu often eating spaghetti like an unnamed movie icon. 

He normally accepted the changes in his life stoically whether it was his new friend Max...,

or the younger more energetic playmate Whateley who would keep Shaun's face clean for the rest of  his life. And they could both rock the sweaters Rigmor made them.

Although he generally was not one for outfits

.


This walk did inspire a poem.
https://sunisaxeman.blogspot.com/2011/04/ice-once-you-folded-entire-continents.html

Shaun's reaction to the cabin was funny. The first year we stayed two weeks. We had a couple lawn chairs and some cheap lanterns. He was quite put out. When the somewhat tacky Brick sofa showed up he was somewhat mollified. He also hated that nettles grew on the newly plowed lane. Even in Calgary a fairly soft spruce needle was cause to be carried some distance. But eventually he became quite the explorer although the couch was best. In the last few years I have begun to suffer from insomnia and so get up at night to read or putz around. But eventually Shaun would appear, if the bedroom door was closed he would demand that it be opened so he could find me and bring me back to bed to unite the family. Because family was everything to him. You will always be loved, always be missed little man.

Shaun feels I have gone on long enough so let's end with something short.

https://sunisaxeman.blogspot.com/2011/08/summers-hot-breath-small-dog-pants.html

“The things that make us happy make us wise. ” John Crowley - Little Big

As an antidote to poor Marie Kondo, who just wants to bring us joy.

It's Never Too Late to Have a Happy Childhood" is Doktor's Leech's motto as he opens a haul of Creepy and Eerie Magazines, a forbidden delicacy from his childhood. Thanks to an on-line auction at Back to the Past Collectibles (http://gobacktothepast.com/) the Doktor is finally able to see what his mother warned him about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV1tpFqJnBU

While my childhood was not unhappy, I also never truly embraced adulthood.  

Evening Flight

"Where the names float like birds, and all desire dies,

And the life we longed for finds us at the end."

from A Substitute for Time

by John Koethe

Someone had a bad winter, 

someone else had a good walk.

"the walk liberating, I was released from forms,   

from the perpendiculars,

      straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds

of thought

into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends   

               of sight:"

from Corsons Inlet

By A.R. Ammons

" That this aggressive haste has influenced us detrimentally

from our earliest schooldays is sad but inescapable. Unhappily,

moreover, the increasing speed of modern life has long since

done away with what meager leisure we had then. Our ways of

enjoying ourselves are hardly less irritating and nerve-racking

than the pressure of our work."As much as possible, as fast as

possible" is the motto. And so there is more and more entertainment

and less and less joy."

                         from On Little Joys 1905

                           by Hermann Hesse

"It was a pretty sight, and a seasonable one, that met their eyes

 when they flung the door open. In the fore-court, lit by the dim 

rays of a horn lantern, some eight or ten little field-mice stood in 

a semicircle, red worsted comforters round their throats, their fore-paws 

thrust deep into their pockets, their feet jigging for warmth. With bright 

beady eyes they glanced shyly at each other, sniggering a little, sniffing 

and applying coat-sleeves a good deal. As the door opened, one of the elder 

ones that carried the lantern was just saying, "Now then, one, two, three!" and 

forthwith their shrill little voices uprose on the air, singing one of the 

old-time carols that their forefathers composed in fields that were fallow 

and held by frost, or when snow-bound in chimney corners, and handed 

down to be sung in the miry street to lamp-lit windows at Yule-time."

We had a nice long break at Christmas, Helen's mother was 

here for the week. We had friends over Christmas Day for 

turkey and a viewing of Alastair Sim in a Christmas Carol but

I wanted to celebrate the season a bit more. This blog is of

course named with a quote from the Wind in the Willows so two

more quotes seemed appropriate. and this cast of characters

has been lovingly assembled over the years to help us

remember to honour Christmas in out hearts, hopefully all

year long.

        

        

  

"He saw clearly how plain and simple — how narrow, 

even — it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant 

to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in 

one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the 

new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun 

and air and all they offered him and creep home and 

stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to 

him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to 

the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to 

come back to, this place which was all his own, these things 

which were so glad to see him again and could always be 

counted upon for the same simple welcome."

both quotes  from the Wind in the Willows

                                                                by Kenneth Graham

"My! it was fine, coming through the snow as the red sun 
was rising and showing against the black tree-trunks! As you 
went along in the stillness, every now and then masses 
of snow slid off the branches suddenly with a flop! 
making you jump and run for cover. Snow-castles and 
snow-caverns had sprung up out of nowhere in the night
--and snow bridges, terraces, ramparts--I could have stayed 
and played with them for hours. Here and there great 
branches had been torn away by the sheer weight of 
the snow, and robins perched and hopped on them in 
their perky conceited way, just as if they had done it 
themselves."

from The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame

Friday the temperature went up and the snow has been melting.

"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'   He chortled in his joy."

Though some might miss it.

Did someone say Release the Kraken(s) 

"Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."

From The Stolen Child
W.B. Yeats



 

As I trundled thru the house getting ready for work

I heard the sound of the finches up and singing  with

the dawn. It is for me a happy sound

Later I read an article that appeared as a link on aldaily.com

from the New Republic, Happyism The creepy new economics 

of pleasure by Deirdre N. McCloskey. She touched all

the basics pleasure vs happiness, the hedonic treadmill,

economic theory, surveys etc. and while I found it

interesting if long I was also distracted more and more by the

thoughts of what make me happy. I also realized that one thing
that I enjoy when I read is the authors attempts to capture the

moment when they are overwhelmed by joy, revelation,
fuifillment, what ever you choose to call it.

One of my favorite descriptions of this experience follows.

“I feel as though I stand at the foot of an infinitely

high staircase, down which some exuberant spirit

is flinging tennis ball after tennis ball, eternally,

and the one thing I want in the world is a tennis ball.”

from

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Annie Dillard

-----------------

A rare visitor to the yard.

We have been in this house close to twenty years.

After we had been here a few years we heard

the beautiful song of the male House Finch a

bird we were not familiar with here. He would

(we assumed it was the same bird) appear every

Spring but never seemed to get an answer. Eventually,

I can not tell if it was in time for our lone swain more

finches appeared. Now they outnumber house sparrows

at our feeder. And at present they are both bringing their

young to feed and the food is disappearing from the new

Squirrel proof feeders at an alarming rate.



"In trees still dripping night some nameless birds
Woke, shook out their arrowy wings, and sang,
Slowly, like finches sifting through a dream."

From

Morning in a new land
Mary Oliver



The House Finches do seem to spill enough

food that the squirrels while in danger of

frustration are not in danger of starvation.

Leopard's Bane the first non-bulb to flower in our

garden each year.

"Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom."

from

A Blessing

   Jame Wright